Growing Up:

My mum is from Australia and my Dad is from New Zealand. I was born in Australia, but moved to New Zealand when I was just a baby.

Here’s a photo of me with my mum and dad, taken when I was six weeks old. I like what my parents are wearing in this photo, especially my mum's hat, and I still have the shawl that I was wrapped in.

When I was little, my Dad worked on a farm in New Zealand, so that’s where I lived too. He used to get up very early each morning to milk the cows. Mum would put the fresh cows' milk on our cereal for breakfast.

Here’s a funny photo of me when I was first learning to walk. I was about 10 months old.

This is me with my doll, Molly. Molly used to cry when you tipped her over. I thought she was beautiful. I still have Molly but she is old and worn now. She can no longer cry and half of her hair has fallen out. My daughters, and their friends, think she is a bit creepy.

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I have a younger brother and sister. This is the three of us together. What do you think of the clothes we were wearing?

Our family pet was a lovely dog named Cindy. Living on a farm, we also had pet lambs and chickens. My favourite pet lamb was called Bunty. Just like a dog, Bunty would come running over when I called her name. Except she wouldn’t think to stop, until the last second, so I would have to quickly jump out of her way when she came running, or else she would knock me over.

I went to Greenpark Primary School, where my reports would say “imaginative written expression but careless with spelling and punctuation.” Reading was what I loved to do most, and I always had (as my parents would say) my nose stuck in a book. I wanted to be just like the children I read about in Enid Blyton books - drinking ginger pop and going on adventures.

My first “book” was one I wrote and illustrated myself when I was about 9 years old. It was called “The Storm” and was about some children who were home, alone, at night (their parents went out for dinner) during a big storm. It had lots of exciting action such as lightning strikes, falling trees and even an attacking snake. It also had a really awful first line: “It was a dark and stormy night….”

When I was eleven years old my family shifted to Australia. I went into year 7 at Cohuna High School. I remember, in my first few weeks, other students would keep asking me to say things like “fish and chips” and "six" so they could laugh at my Kiwi accent. As a teenager I still loved to read; anything from true-life stories to science-fiction.

At the age of fourteen, I went to St Josephs College, Echuca, and was a weekly boarder for the last two years of my secondary schooling. When I was little, my mum would threaten to send me to Boarding School when I was naughty, so I was always a bit afraid of it. When I finally did go for real (and not because I was naughty) I loved it.

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